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James Marsh

3/5 stars
Recreating the unbridled hedonism of early Hollywood in a heady cocktail of sex, drugs, and iconic roles, Damien Chazelle’s indulgent three-hour epic Babylon is both a love letter to and cautionary tale of the excesses of cinema’s golden age.
Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie headline a sprawling ensemble cast, as the Oscar-winning director of La La Land charts the fluctuating fortunes of a handful of industry players against a backdrop of endless bacchanalia.
We first meet opportunistic young studio hand Manny Torres (newcomer Diego Calva) as he is being showered in elephant faeces while delivering the lumbering mammal to an orgiastic party in the Hollywood Hills.


Once there, he meets Nellie LaRoy (Robbie), a rambunctious wannabe actress from New Jersey, who is determined to gatecrash the party – and the industry – by any means necessary.
Also in attendance are matinee idol Jack Conrad (Pitt), seductive Chinese performer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), and aspiring African-American jazz musician Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo).

Over the next few years, their lives become increasingly intertwined in the all-consuming quagmire of Tinseltown, a dream factory that destroys its stars while simultaneously immortalising them on screen.
The perpetual party, they soon discover, is about to end. The advent of sound sees a near total overhaul of the star system, with precious few of the industry’s most popular performers surviving the transition to talkies.
This is coupled with the introduction of the Hayes Code, Hollywood’s first censorship body, which vows to remove all salacious content from the screen and transform Hollywood into a bastion of morality and family values.
Babylon rides these seismic shifts as though aboard a runaway roller coaster, depicting gleefully their cataclysmic effects on its fictional protagonists – all of them just a stone’s throw removed from real-life cinematic greats like Douglas Fairbanks and Anna May Wong.

Chazelle is eager to illustrate how little there is to differentiate the chaos on set from the carnage of his characters’ private lives, and how many of the era’s most iconic films were conjured into being through a fog of booze, pills and endless fornication.
Lavishly staged and utterly bewitched by its subject matter, even as it exposes its least attractive qualities, Babylon remains a story that’s been told countless times.
Chazelle ends with a coda, set many years later, which openly acknowledges the huge debt his film owes to Singin’ in the Rain, even as he highlights how that film retooled earlier material and found cause for celebration in the same apocalyptic moment in Hollywood’s fortunes.
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Babylon movie review: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie in La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s tale of sex, drugs and excess in early Hollywood

Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy in a still from Babylon. Photo: Paramount Pictures

Brad Pitt (left) as Jack Conrad and Diego Calva as Manny Torres in a still from Babylon, directed by Damien Chazelle. Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu in a still from Babylon. Photo: Paramount Pictures

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Damien Chazelle’s movie Babylon takes viewers back to the sex, drugs and excesses of the silent movie era in Hollywood’s early years
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy, a young wannabe actress, while Brad Pitt takes the role of matinee idol Jack Conrad


Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead a big ensemble cast in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, a three-hour epic of excess set in early Hollywood at the end of the silent movie era.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review

Review | Babylon movie review: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie in La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s tale of sex, drugs and excess in early Hollywood

Damien Chazelle’s movie Babylon takes viewers back to the sex, drugs and excesses of the silent movie era in Hollywood’s early years Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy, a young wannabe actress, while Brad Pitt takes the role of matinee idol Jack Conrad

Damien Chazelle’s movie Babylon takes viewers back to the sex, drugs and excesses of the silent movie era in Hollywood’s early years

Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy, a young wannabe actress, while Brad Pitt takes the role of matinee idol Jack Conrad